Dry cleaning

July 29, 2011 8:55 AM

What actually happens to your clothes after you give them to the dry cleaner?
posted by John Cohen (83 comments total)

"This shirt says it's 'Dry Clean Only.' That means it's dirty." - Mitch Hedberg
posted by meandthebean at 9:00 AM on July 29, 2011 [21 favorites]

I always assumed their back rooms were filled with unicorns who would blast your clothes clean with a burst of unicorn magic directly from their horns.
posted by elizardbits at 9:08 AM on July 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Dry cleaning is magic; you'll never convince me otherwise. I took some sweaters to my dry cleaner recently that were near death, all nubs and stretched to unusual proportions. As far as I can tell my dry cleaner just immediately disposed of them, found doppelgängers on eBay, and handed me a stack of brand new sweaters 4 days later.
posted by 2bucksplus at 9:08 AM on July 29, 2011

Protip: most dry clean only clothes are totally fine being washed at home. Cold wash, gentle detergent, delicates cycle, hang dry. Roll-dry in a towel first if it's a sweater or something. Boom. Done. And they come out smelling clean instead of all chemically. Don't waste money sending them to the scary mystery cleaners!

Most of my clothing is dry clean only, and the only things I'd ever dry clean are nice coats and suits. Or maybe a really fancy dress with beading or something, but I don't have any of those.
posted by phunniemee at 9:09 AM on July 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

I never have my Saville Row suits dry-cleaned - perish the thought. I prefer them to be cleansed the traditional British way: a candence of badgers should lick the stains away with their rough, urgent tongues; the well-spittled garments should thence be dried under the gentle whaft of vole flatulence.

That's also my preferred sexual deviance, of course - rough, urgent badger tongue followed by a wind-massage of vole-fart.

So you can keep your bloody dry cleaners and your ghastly launderettes - I can have a good suit cleaned and pop my lolly like a sperm volcano at the same time.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:10 AM on July 29, 2011 [63 favorites]

I always assumed they had a little time machine that sent my shirts into the past, when they were clean.

(Unless it's chocolate, which has a tachyon-inversion field.)
posted by griphus at 9:10 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

pop my lolly like a sperm volcano

I will be using this in a sentence this weekend, I promise you.
posted by tommasz at 9:12 AM on July 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

I worked in a dry cleaner all through high school. One of our favorite pranks was to get the new guy to stick his head in the dry-cleaning machine and take a deep breath. Instant percloroethylene induced pass out. They've probably all got cancer now.
Oh, the fun we had...
posted by conifer at 9:14 AM on July 29, 2011 [10 favorites]

That said, this article kind of read like a PR hit for P&G.
posted by pmv at 9:14 AM on July 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

What is Martinizing?

And why does it only take an hour?
posted by Benny Andajetz at 9:15 AM on July 29, 2011

Well how long is your cocktail hour?


Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the flatulent vole.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 9:16 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Why do they make clothes that you can't wash? More choice in materials, I guess?

I don't wear anything but jeans, polos and t-shirts. If I ever had to put on another suit in my life I think I would jump off a bridge.
posted by Huck500 at 9:18 AM on July 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

Not everyone can get a job at Denny's.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:20 AM on July 29, 2011 [8 favorites]

Appropriate Seinfeld bits.
posted by Grangousier at 9:20 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Why do they make clothes that you can't wash?

The spin cycle is remarkably violent and it's more amazing that they make clothes that you can wash.
posted by smackfu at 9:21 AM on July 29, 2011

(One bit in twice, because $I == 'idiot')
posted by Grangousier at 9:22 AM on July 29, 2011

I was under the impression that some clothes required dry cleaning because of the mix of fabrics, which could expand and shrink at different rates in typical washing machines. I could be mistaken.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on July 29, 2011

Take back your mink
To from whence it came...
And tell 'em to Hollanderize it for some other dame!
posted by Ideefixe at 9:24 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I worked in a dry cleaner all through high school. One of our favorite pranks was to get the new guy to stick his head in the dry-cleaning machine and take a deep breath. Instant percloroethylene induced pass out. They've probably all got cancer now.

I went to high school with a kid who worked at a dry cleaner. He died of leukemia at the age of 19.

No, I'm not kidding.

Anecdata, I realize, but you'll never convince me it wasn't his job that did it.
posted by rusty at 9:27 AM on July 29, 2011

"... and a water-and-detergent method known as wet cleaning. "

What... this... I... wow!!!

Water? And detergent? Amazing! I would never have thought of it. Being unaware of this secret, this arcane bit of knowledge, which I was not privy to until now, I always just put my clothes into the washer without detergent and then would turn the water off and the machine on. Yet inevitably my clothes would come out the same as they went in each and every time. I must try this magical "wet" method immediately. It seems crazy but it gives me hope that I will finally get to wear clean non-stinky clothes!

Yet this seems to be incomplete information. Wouldn't the clothes come out soaking wet. Who wants to wear wet clothes however clean and nicely smelling? There must be another revelation forthcoming that completes the illumination of the mysterious art of transmuting dirty clothes into clean AND dry clothes. I can't even imagine what one would need do to achieve this. I hope it doesn't involve tying the wet clothes to the necks of free roaming animals. I only have 2 cats and they wouldn't be able to bear the weight of all my laundry.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:27 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

So the article doesn't actually say how dry cleaning works other than mentioning "perc" several times like a police officer in a high-school assembly about the dangers of drugs.

So, to channel my inner insane clown, fucking dry cleaning, how does it work?
posted by GuyZero at 9:30 AM on July 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

Not everyone can get a job at Denny's.

So every time I see a guy sweating in a suit when it's 90 degrees outside and I feel sorry for him, he's looking at me in my jeans and polo thinking, "That guy must work at Denny's, poor fool."

That's funny.
posted by Huck500 at 9:33 AM on July 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

Just so that there is no misunderstandings, dry-cleaning is not actually dry. The clothes come out of the machine wet. Then they're put in a big tumble dryer and dried. After that, they're ironed (One of the big costs of dry cleaning is labour - the person that irons those suits and silk shirts is paid quite well, and it's a skilled job). Something about the perc stops them from getting spoiled. But there's water as well - both machines separate the water from the perc after the cycle so that it can be reused and eventually disposed of safely.
posted by conifer at 9:34 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

You heard me right, brother-- dry cleaning.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:35 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

So, to channel my inner insane clown, fucking dry cleaning, how does it work?

The little infographic in the article explains more about the dry cleaning process than the video dudes do.
posted by phunniemee at 9:36 AM on July 29, 2011

They've probably all got cancer now.

One of the percs of the job.
posted by Kabanos at 9:42 AM on July 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

My grandfather ran a very successful high-end dry cleaning shop. He pretty much told his children that the run was over, and not to expect it to continue with those kinds of profits. Two reasons: 1) Woolite. 2) Modern disposable clothes. He specialized in hand-tied lace gloves, and this kind of heirloom article that doesn't exist anymore. Also, they used to be called "cleaners and dyers," because the practice was to buy light colored clothes, and then progressively dye them darker. It required real artistry to keep the ensemble, including gloves and shoes, in a matching color.

Another big part of the business was high quality Persian carpets, and those aren't so common nowadays either.

He advertised his shop by sending a clean handkerchief to to every cleaner in town, and then weighing them on a laboratory scale afterwords. He claimed only he returned them lighter, rather than heavier.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:49 AM on July 29, 2011 [15 favorites]

More Dangerous Than Dynamite, 1941 PSA about the dangers of cleaning your clothes at home, instead of taking them to the local dry cleaners.
posted by crunchland at 9:53 AM on July 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

The spin cycle is remarkably violent and it's more amazing that they make clothes that you can wash.

Doesn't the "spin cycle" just squish the clothes with centrifugal force? Is that really violent? The agitation part seems pretty violent though.

I haven't dry-cleaned anything for ages, and the FPP article makes me glad of that. I just throw it in the washer by itself or wash by hand. Haven't had a problem. Occasionally requires ironing.
posted by zennie at 9:55 AM on July 29, 2011

Dry cleaning has always been one of those things I associate with either the upper class, the suit & tie brigade, or extravagant drag queen-inspired ladies. As I fit into none of those categories and abhor weddings to the point that I'd rather spend a month in a tiger cage in Cambodia in the summer than grit my teeth and endure someone's personal love atrocity parade, I have a single suit. I bought it at the Gayhatin' Army outlet for twenty bucks, tailored it to make my ass like tantalizingly bitable, and wear it solely to funerals. I have, as yet, never had to clean it, and the pockets are stuffed with funeral programs. If people in my circle start dying in greater numbers, I may need to clean it, but I'll probably just start skipping funerals of my lesser acquaintances.

My former brother-in-law, on the other hand, is a lazy bastard in the IT business, so he sends everything out and gets them back in a little package tied up with string. I don't envy him as much as want to push him down the stairs. One should only receive one's clothing back in elegant packaging if one is a member of the fading aristocracy, or if one is Stephen Fry's lover, though I suspect he actually only does the Jeeves thing on television, and in my imagination while I'm...well, never mind.

Your mileage may vary. Me—I stopped buying white things so I'd never have to bleach, stopped buying weird fancy clothes so that I had to separate loads on some peculiar criteria, and find my zen satori in clipping my clothing to the line, piece by piece, returning to unclip and fold in the late afternoon, having burned zero fossil fuels or used waxy awful chemicals to assist the process of drying my clothes. Other people's lives seem so confusing to me sometimes.
posted by sonascope at 9:56 AM on July 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

The spin cycle is remarkably violent and it's more amazing that they make clothes that you can wash.

You must mean the agitation cycle, right? Because the spin cycle is just...gravity.
posted by DU at 9:57 AM on July 29, 2011

pop my lolly like a sperm volcano

I will be using this in a sentence this weekend, I promise you.

I will be using this as a sentence, myself. Declarative.
posted by davejay at 9:58 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Imperative.
posted by whuppy at 9:59 AM on July 29, 2011 [6 favorites]

Next up: "dry" wines contain water.
posted by madcaptenor at 10:00 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

Hortatory.
posted by clockzero at 10:01 AM on July 29, 2011

..the practice was to buy light colored clothes, and then progressively dye them darker.

To make it appear that you had more than one set?
posted by DU at 10:01 AM on July 29, 2011

More Dangerous Than Dynamite, 1941 PSA about the dangers of cleaning your clothes at home, instead of taking them to the local dry cleaners.

That video is about the dangers of dry cleaning your clothes at home. Like with gasoline. Open basins of fuming gasoline. In your house. In your house with a gas stove and 1941 era electric wiring and candles and who knows how many other potential nearby igniting sources.

I'm going to let them have that one.
posted by phunniemee at 10:05 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

To make it appear that you had more than one set?
posted by DU

Dying covered dirt, fraying, and scuffs. Each time it was re-dyed it came out looking like a freshly painted room. One kept more than one set of clothes, and you started with summer lights that transitioned to fresh-looking winter darks.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:05 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

pop my lolly like a sperm volcano

I will be using this in a sentence this weekend, I promise you.

I will be using this as a sentence, myself. Declarative.

Mean imperative.

Mean imperative.

MEAN IMPERATIVE.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:05 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

The article left out the part where the cleaners take a tiny vise-grip to one button and shatter it. Or does that just happen to my shirts?
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:07 AM on July 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

Uhh... he dry cleans the clothes?

Don't be fatuous, N@.
posted by Eideteker at 10:08 AM on July 29, 2011

The article left out the part where the cleaners take a tiny vise-grip to one button and shatter it.

Back in the day, each turtle shell button was individually covered with a tie-on protector. Especially nice buttons were removed and sewn back on with each cleaning.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:10 AM on July 29, 2011 [5 favorites]

New York-based Floyd Advisory LLC found that women paid an average of 73% more than men for laundered shirts. Dry cleaners surveyed say women's shirts don't fit in their industrial presses as well as men's and must be ironed by hand.

Does anyone else think that looks like a rather nonsensical excuse?

It is pure anecdote, but in my experience women get things dry cleaned vastly more frequently than men do. Yet somehow they expect us to believe that their presses are optimized for men's shirts? Despite the fact that dry clean only men's shirts are extremely rare, while dry clean only women's shirts are vastly more common?

I'm thinking it's more a matter of tradition and the sure knowledge that women will pay more because they've got more dry clean only stuff and they are, therefore, stuck paying more.
posted by sotonohito at 10:17 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

I worked for a dry cleaner in Newport Beach briefly in my youth. It was bought out by some dry cleaner "king" from Arizona, who apparently had a dry cleaning empire. He was a big, swarthy, gold chain wearing dude; thought he was the Godfather or something. Dude, it's dry cleaning, not a Colombian cartel. Behave accordingly.

The job sucked, of course. The most interesting thing was finding treasures in people's pockets. You wouldn't believe how often people forgot they had illegal drugs in their pockets. I would treat them like any other valuable; bag it and staple it to the ticket.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:20 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

The article left out the part where the cleaners take a tiny vise-grip to one button and shatter it.

That is the pressing machine working it's magic, pressing machines are somewhat rough on the shirts. At least here in New York, there are many places that "hand press" shirts so buttons never get crushed and you have nice sharp creases on the sleeves.

Yet somehow they expect us to believe that their presses are optimized for men's shirts

I can believe this. I, and many men I know, have all of our dress shirts laundered and pressed. Men's shirts are all a similar shape, whereas with womens shirts there is much more variation.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:22 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

As far as I can tell my dry cleaner just immediately disposed of them, found doppelgängers on eBay, and handed me a stack of brand new sweaters 4 days later.

You might be surprised at how often this actually happens. At my place, once in a while an item of clothing would be ruined, through some accident (or, quite often, because the manufacturer's care label was complete B.S.), and we'd have to run out and get an exact duplicate. 90% of the time we let the customer know, but sometimes with regulars we knew to be super touchy bastards, we'd do it on the sly. It's these sitcom-y moments that made being a dry cleaner slightly less hellish.

Also, those sequined, beaded, and ornamented items very often never actually go through dry cleaning, since if they're glued on, the solvent will dissolve it right off -- or even dissolve the ornaments themselves. They're often hand-washed and pressed. Which sounds bad to many customers, but really, most of the value of the "dry cleaning" service is not in the cleaning itself, but the pressing.
posted by Pants McCracky at 10:25 AM on July 29, 2011 [9 favorites]

I, and many men I know, have all of our dress shirts laundered and pressed.

You probably don't park in a carhole either.
posted by DU at 10:25 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

How did we get this far without a mention of Dryel? It's saved us so much money.
posted by desjardins at 10:28 AM on July 29, 2011

Yet somehow they expect us to believe that their presses are optimized for men's shirts? Despite the fact that dry clean only men's shirts are extremely rare, while dry clean only women's shirts are vastly more common?

The key word here is laundered. Dry cleaning all goes through the same process, but men's laundered dress shirts go through a separate process and are pressed on a machine that is specifically designed for them. There might be dress shirt pressing machines that can do women's laundered shirts, so I won't say there aren't, but I never heard of any during my tenure as a dry cleaner.

Even with dry cleaned shirts, though, women's blouses do quite often require more pressing work (due to things like ruffles, ornaments, special buttons, etc.), so it makes sense to charge more for items that require more labor. Men's clothing is generally pretty uniform and straightforward (suit jackets, pants) and easier to press than women's clothing.
posted by Pants McCracky at 10:31 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

How did we get this far without a mention of Dryel?

I've used that for dry clean only sweaters, and even wool pants. I've tried using it on jackets and then steaming them, but it still looks like I slept in my suit.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:32 AM on July 29, 2011

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the flatulent vole.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 5:16 PM on July 29 [+] [!]

VaD, if I may say so, that is a particularly high-class style.
You're not a famous foreign correspondent by any chance?
posted by MessageInABottle at 10:37 AM on July 29, 2011

FTA: She says she is nervous about chemicals and sometimes will drive farther to a cleaner that promotes itself as eco-friendly.

*put head in hands, weeps*
posted by Lemurrhea at 10:45 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

It is pure anecdote, but in my experience women get things dry cleaned vastly more frequently than men do. Yet somehow they expect us to believe that their presses are optimized for men's shirts?

I'd think men would get their clothes dry-cleaned more often, since their clothes would tend to get dirty/sweaty faster. Also, men are more likely to have a job requiring them to show up in business attire 5 days a week.
posted by John Cohen at 10:49 AM on July 29, 2011

You're not a famous foreign correspondent by any chance?

Up to a point, Lord Copper.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 11:04 AM on July 29, 2011

Also, men are more likely to have a job requiring them to show up in business attire 5 days a week.

What? That makes no sense. Most women work these days.
posted by emjaybee at 11:14 AM on July 29, 2011 [2 favorites]

[article] She says she is nervous about chemicals and sometimes will drive farther to a cleaner that promotes itself as eco-friendly.

And this is why there's a dry-cleaner in my neighborhood with a big, cheerful banner proclaiming the truth:

YES! WE USE ORGANIC SOLVENTS!

posted by Westringia F. at 11:25 AM on July 29, 2011 [19 favorites]

pop my lolly like a sperm volcano

I have found the title for my debut prog-rock album.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:27 AM on July 29, 2011

What? That makes no sense. Most women work these days.

I think women have more options, most of the women where I work, unless they are executives, wear nice clothes, but not business attire. All the men wear dress shirts, unless they are IT or facilities. Don't get me started on how IT is allowed to wear polo shirts yet developers are required to wear business attire.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:28 AM on July 29, 2011

It is pure anecdote, but in my experience women get things dry cleaned vastly more frequently than men do. Yet somehow they expect us to believe that their presses are optimized for men's shirts? Despite the fact that dry clean only men's shirts are extremely rare, while dry clean only women's shirts are vastly more common?

I think you're confusing dry cleaning with laundering... I have my dress shirts laundered (i.e. washed) and pressed for a couple bucks a piece, rather than dry cleaned.
posted by dixiecupdrinking at 11:28 AM on July 29, 2011 [3 favorites]

I do not want my special snowflake coverings to be thrown in a vat with anybody else's stuff. So I have no wool clothing, buy cotton/poly shirts, etc. My clothes are washed by me in my front load washer so they are not badly creased, and the dryer takes care of minor wrinkles.
I try to tell clothing purveyors that life is to short to be spent ironing.
posted by Cranberry at 11:49 AM on July 29, 2011

I have a bag of clothes that are "take to cleaners." I don't know what's in there anymore. I doubt it fits. I guarantee it's no longer in style.

There's only one good thing about dry cleaning and that's the joy it seems to bring to Zippy the Pinhead.
posted by Gucky at 11:52 AM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Imperative.

and the person who got upset enough to bold it repeatedly

As noted in a previous thread (yesterday), I am a product of the Chicago Public School System. Cut a fellow a little slack. Besides, I'm still funnier than you are.
posted by davejay at 12:10 PM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Brocktoon: "The job sucked, of course. The most interesting thing was finding treasures in people's pockets. You wouldn't believe how often people forgot they had illegal drugs in their pockets. I would treat them like any other valuable; bag it and staple it to the ticket."

You Sir are a Gentleman and a Scholar. A Mensch of the purest quill. I bow to you sir. If we ever meet in person I will buy you a dram of your favorite and perhaps gently cup your testicles.
posted by Splunge at 1:22 PM on July 29, 2011 [8 favorites]

I got a D in chemistry. Please explain why the organic solvents thing is funny.
posted by desjardins at 1:48 PM on July 29, 2011

There's a whole category of compounds called "organic" because they contain carbon. Benzene is an organic solvent. But it's not organic like your groceries are organic. Benzene, an organic compound, is prohibited in organic produce.
posted by GuyZero at 1:57 PM on July 29, 2011

basically people think organic means "good for you" when to chemists it just means "contains carbon".
posted by GuyZero at 1:57 PM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

desjardins: "organic" just means, roughly, "made from carbon". The solvents in question are made from carbon and are bad for you (think gasoline). But somehow in food world "organic" got to mean whatever it means, so people think "organic solvents" must be good for you.

In the sense that a chemist would use the word, all food is organic.

I suppose ethanol (i. e. drinking alcohol) could be described as both a food and an organic solvent.
posted by madcaptenor at 1:59 PM on July 29, 2011

On posting: what GuyZero said.
posted by madcaptenor at 2:00 PM on July 29, 2011

Also, men are more likely to have a job requiring them to show up in business attire 5 days a week.
What? That makes no sense. Most women work these days.

Women don't have to wear ties, and having a shirt buttoned up at the collar means more neck rubbage and thus more dirt, especially if it's white. Although business attire is fairly strict, women almost always have more flexibility in what they wear, even in the professions - did anyone catch Nancy Pelosi's Star-Trek outfit last night?

Of course, the downside is that a woman will get criticized if she just turns up in the same or same-looking outfit all the time, whereas 3 suits, 10 shirts, and 10 ties would constitute a large wardrobe for most men outside of showbusiness or a millionaire's club. And then there are heels. Or so I hear, anyway...in San Francisco lady lawyers can wear flipflops as long as they look expensive.
posted by anigbrowl at 2:26 PM on July 29, 2011

in San Francisco lady lawyers can wear flipflops as long as they look expensive.

Yeah, as a teacher I used to wear slacks, a button-down shirt and nice shoes, but I noticed that the female teachers were wearing flip flops with flowers hotglued on the front, and I switched to jeans and moccasins. So far, so good.
posted by Huck500 at 3:20 PM on July 29, 2011

"This shirt says it's 'Dry Clean Only.' That means it's dirty." - Mitch Hedberg

Not Mitch's only joke about dry-cleaners.
posted by Zerowensboring at 3:30 PM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

madcaptenor: "I suppose ethanol (i. e. drinking alcohol) could be described as both a food and an organic solvent."

I prefer to think of it as a tasty organic poison. But to each his/her own.
posted by Splunge at 3:50 PM on July 29, 2011

I don't know if I'd call ethanol tasty. Vodka is not tasty, and vodka's basically ethanol diluted with water.
posted by madcaptenor at 4:39 PM on July 29, 2011

I take my clothes to Wu's Laundry and Waste Disposal.
posted by bwg at 4:41 PM on July 29, 2011

I always assumed they did nothing, put those paper tags on your clothes, stuck a plastic bag over your clothes, and charged $8 (in a major metro area with suit-dominated professions, dry cleaners charge accordingly).
posted by bad grammar at 5:06 PM on July 29, 2011

I spent my last summer in America working for a dry cleaner. I'd pick up the clothes as they came through the motorized conveyer, put then on a hook, and cover them with clear color coded plastic. For 8 hours.
The only thing that kept me sane was classic rock radio and the occasional Mambo shirt or Vash the Stampede coat.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:18 PM on July 29, 2011

Your mileage may vary. Me—I stopped buying white things so I'd never have to bleach, stopped buying weird fancy clothes so that I had to separate loads on some peculiar criteria, and find my zen satori in clipping my clothing to the line, piece by piece, returning to unclip and fold in the late afternoon, having burned zero fossil fuels or used waxy awful chemicals to assist the process of drying my clothes. Other people's lives seem so confusing to me sometimes.

There's no hot water in my washer and something about air-drying clothes makes me unreasonably angry, so I usually haul them to the laundromat. Once I did this, but the laundromat was closed. So I'm sitting down for a late breakfast with a massive cloth bag and I realize I'm wearing my Dexter shirt...
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:22 PM on July 29, 2011

Sorry for the triple post, but does anyone know how to get fake GWAR blood out of a wool flatcap? The drycleaner was stumped.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:26 PM on July 29, 2011

There was an AskMeFi about dry cleaning a while ago. I can't find it at the moment, but it had interesting info in it.

And as far as vodka not having flavor, there is a difference between pure ethyl and vodka. Some people don't see it. I understand. Myself, I like vodkas and could spend a bit of time talking about them. The thing is, unless you are drinking some quadruple filtered 150 proof lighter fluid, there is a difference. I notice it. My dad noticed it. We had some enjoyable times comparing same.

Of course, YMMV.

I love bourbon and scotch as well. The taste is the thing.
posted by Splunge at 7:35 PM on July 29, 2011

I'm not saying vodka is totally flavorless. But it's a lot less flavorless than other liquors.
posted by madcaptenor at 7:56 PM on July 29, 2011

Also, men are more likely to have a job requiring them to show up in business attire 5 days a week.

What? That makes no sense. Most women work these days.

That makes no sense as a response to what I said. I said "more likely." The fact that most women have jobs doesn't refute the assertion that men are more likely than women to need to wear business attire 5 days a week.

Many women choose to drop out of the labor force to raise children. Men are less likely to make this choice.
posted by John Cohen at 8:27 PM on July 29, 2011

1930s British debutantes who owned long, pure white, kidskin evening gloves used to be able to pop them in the post box - with just "Pullars of Perth" on the label - and they'd be delivered to the famous specialist Scottish firm. (And returned amazing quickly too.)

White kid gloves needed cleaning after every single wear. Many debutantes had to "make do" with cotton gloves.

I got that titbit from Wait for Me! -the 2010 memoir by the Mitford sister, Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire.

But I really wanted an excuse to post my favorite quote from her incredibly entertaining - if infuriatingly snooty (natch!) - book. (She is 91).

"When I arrived at the airport in Rio after the long flight via Dakar, I was held up at immigration; the trouble was the rigmarole on my passport: 'Her Grace Deborah Vivian Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire'. 'Yes, that's me, 'I said. The official looked again. 'Where are all the others?' he asked..."
posted by Jody Tresidder at 8:45 AM on July 30, 2011

I never went to the dry cleaners so much as after I joined the Navy.

The pea coat, the dress blues, the dress whites all have to be dry cleaned....
And then there's the NSUs (khaki shirt with black pants) which simply looks better after being dry cleaned...
Combine that with the fact that I can't sew worth a damn and I drop off and pick up my items about once or twice a month.

(A brief childhood foray into embroidery and other "housewife" duties was nigh worthless, other than being able to handle a needle safely and sew on the odd button when needed. For a while after I arrived at my first duty station, several of the guys kept asking if I would sew on their patches, buttons, etc. Not because I talked about sewing, or showed examples of my work, but because I am female. Now, while I take some delight in shucking off that stereotype, I also realize I could be making at least 50 bucks a month....Makes me wonder if I shouldn't learn, or if I'd feel as if I were objectifying myself.)
posted by DisreputableDog at 11:08 AM on July 31, 2011